The Navy’s Chief Data Officer (CDO) said today that the Defense Department’s (DoD) highly anticipated joint data strategy between the Army, Navy, and Air Force will feature an emphasis on data protection and security.
At FCW’s Emerging Tech Workshop on Oct. 30, Navy CDO Tom Sasala told the audience that security will be prioritized alongside the existing visible, accessible, understandable, trustworthy, and interoperable (VAUTI) principles that guide DoD IT strategy.
A signed version of the strategy is set to be released sometime “next month,” the CDO said.
In discussing the security imperative, Sasala indicated that the joint data strategy may leave some security questions unanswered.
“Securing the data doesn’t make it protected,” he said. “How do we bind our access control information to use the data? And encode the data in a way that if someone does steal it, because they will, that it doesn’t have any value,” he asked.
Sasala also clarified differences between DoD’s joint data strategy and the implementation plan set to accompany it.
“The Navy is not going to have a data strategy,” he said. “The DoD will have a data strategy and the Navy will have an implementation plan.”
The joint data strategy will include 12 information domains, including one dedicated to geospatial strategies, Sasala confirmed. Each domain includes “any number of” subdomains, but the final document will only be nine pages long because the agencies stripped out implementation details.
DoD announced its collaboration with CDOs at Army, Navy, and Air Force on a joint data strategy in May.
